Fowler made startling claims about the brothers' early home life under their father, Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, to the Daily Mail in 2004.

The Rod Stewart impersonator and limo driver claimed that he was sexually abused by his father for years, and that his mother knew of the abuse.

"There was so much darkness in our home ... It was absolutely miserable. Kevin tried to avoid what was going on," he told the Daily Mail.

House Of Cards: Robin Wright as Claire Underwood and right Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood.

Their father joined the American Nazi Party when the brothers were children, trimming his moustache to more closely resemble Adolf Hitler. Fowler says he was regularly whipped and raped by his father. The abuse was so bad, Fowler alleged, that he avoided having children of his own for fear they would "inherit the sexual predator gene."

Spacey claimed that a young man had attacked him and stolen his mobile phone while he was walking his dog at 4am - later retracting his statement and admitting he'd handed over his mobile phone willingly, injuring himself when he fell chasing the unknown man who'd run off with the phone.

"I fell for a con," Spacey said at the time, apologising to police for falsely claiming he was injured by the man who stole his phone. He acknowledged that some were confused by the Oscar-winner's presence alone in a South London park in the early hours of the morning.

"I think that they are always trying to, you know, (say) 'What was he doing in that park at 4.30am?'. My doggy had to go!"

In the interview after that headline-making incident, Fowler described his brother as an "empty vessel" who had never had a real relationship.

"Neither of us had a chance growing up with two such damaged parents. I went through three marriages and 40 affairs," he said.

Fowler gave a harrowing account of the sexual abuse he claimed to have suffered at the hands of his father, who he said had pornographic pictures of men and women lining the walls of his home office.

Kevin Spacey as a baby with mother Kathleen Fowler. Picture: Supplied

Fowler said that when he was 12 years old, his father summoned him to a bedroom and said he was going to teach him about the birds and the bees.

"He unbuttoned my pants and started playing with me," he alleged.

He yelled for his mother, Kathleen Fowler, who pounded on the locked door before giving up.

"All of a sudden the pounding stopped. Mum had left. I'd never felt so abandoned. Dad started to perform a sex act on me. That was the beginning of my adolescence," he said.

Kevin Spacey arrives at the series four premiere of House of Cards in Washington.

As the abuse continued, Fowler said Spacey, younger by four years, "tried to avoid what was going on by wrapping himself in an emotional bubble. He became very sly and smart."

"He was so determined to try to avoid the whippings that he just minded his Ps and Qs until there was nothing inside. He had no feelings."

Their father died in 1992 at the age of 68, and Fowler said his mother called him to tell him he didn't need to come to the funeral. He had earlier confronted her in 1990 about her alleged complicity with the abuse but was met with "a stony silence." She died in 2003.

"I've always kept in touch with him all our adult lives. I've been cordial when we've spoken or gotten together. But those times have been few and far between. Kevin has virtually ignored me for the last 25 years. During the time he's become a major movie star, he's become a minor character in my life. That's been his choice, not mine," he wrote.